Jenny Aker

Jenny C. Aker is an Assistant Professor of Economics at The Fletcher School and the Department of Economics at Tufts University. She is also a Non-Resident Fellow at the Center for Global Development and a member of the Advisory Board for Frontline SMS.

After working for Catholic Relief Services as Deputy Regional Director in West and Central Africa between 1998 and 2003, Jenny returned to complete her PhD in agricultural economics at the University of California-Berkeley. Jenny works on economic development in Africa, with a primary focus on the impact of information and information technology on development outcomes, particularly in the areas of agriculture, agricultural marketing and education; the relationship between shocks and agricultural food market performance; the determinants of agricultural technology adoption; and impact evaluations of NGO and World Bank projects. Jenny has conducted field work in many countries in West and Central Africa, including Benin, Burkina Faso, Burundi, DRC, The Gambia, Ghana, Liberia, Mali, Mozambique, Niger, Nigeria, Rwanda, Senegal, Sierra Leone and Sudan, as well as Haiti and Guatemala.

Rama Bijapurkar

Rama Bijapurkar is one of India's most respected thought leaders on market strategy and India's Consumer Economy. She is also a keen commentator on social and cultural change in liberalising India. She has her own strategy consulting practice and works with an impressive list of Indian and global companies, helping them across sectors, and describes her mission as bringing market focus to their business strategy.

In addition to her consulting practice, Rama serves or has served as an independent director on the boards of several of India's blue chip companies. She presently serves on the boards of CRISIL (S&P India), Mahindra & Mahindra Financial Services; ICICI Prudential Life Insurance, Janalakshmi Financial Services and on the governing board of IIM Ahmedabad, where she is a visiting faculty. Past boards include Axis Bank, Bharat Petroleum, Infosys Ltd., Mahindra Holidays & Resorts, Titan Industries, Godrej Consumer Products Ltd.

Rama writes extensively in the media and is a dominant voice on issues relating to India's business, consumers and Polity.

Her book "We are like that only: Understanding the Logic of Consumer India" (Penguin India) has been widely acclaimed. The international edition "Winning in the Indian Market": Understanding the Transformation of Consumer India" (Wiley & Sons) has been translated into Hindi and Mandarin. She is also the author of "Customer in the boardroom? Crafting Customer-Based Business Strategy" (Sage), and a book based on the course she teaches at IIM Ahmedabad, and her consulting experiences.

Rama holds a BSc (Hons) degree in Physics from Delhi University and a PGDM from IIM Ahmedabad.

Bhaskar Chakravorti

Bhaskar Chakravorti is the executive director of Fletcher's innovative Institute for Business in the Global Context and Center for Emerging Market Enterprises (CEME) and a professor of practice in International Business. Prior to Fletcher, he was a Partner of McKinsey & Company and a Distinguished Scholar at MIT's Legatum Center for Development and Entrepreneurship. He also served on the faculty of the Harvard Business School and the Harvard University Center for the Environment. Over his 20+ year career as consultant and educator, he has advised more than 30 companies in the Fortune 500, policy-makers, investors, and entrepreneurs. His work has spanned multiple geographies: the Americas, EU, Asia, and Africa. At McKinsey, he was a leader of its Innovation and Global Forces practices and he served on the Firm's Knowledge Services Committee that oversees McKinsey Knowledge Centers, a 1,200 member group of researchers and analysts based in China, India, Belgium, and the US, among others. At Harvard, he taught innovation, entrepreneurship management, and new venture formation. Chakravorti's prior appointments include: partner and thought leader at Monitor Group; game theorist and member of the technical staff at Bellcore (formerly Bell Labs); assistant professor of economics at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign; and officer of TAS, the executive cadre for the Tata Group. Chakravorti's book, "The Slow Pace of Fast Change: Bringing Innovations to Market in a Connected World," Harvard Business School Press -- selected as one of the Best Business Books of the year by multiple publications and an Amazon.com best-seller on Innovation -- has been influential in many client and policy recommendations. He has published widely in both academic and widely read publications and has been invited to speak before academic, executive, and policy audiences and to the media around the world.

Sybil Chidiac

Sybil Chidiac originally joined CARE in 1998 and has over 11 years of experience in savings-led microfinance programming. Based in Dar es Salaam under CARE’s Access Africa program, Ms. Chidiac serves as the Senior Technical Advisor to multi country programs all focusing on CARE’s innovative Village Savings and Loan Association (VSLA) methodology. She provides provided technical leadership and management of the country projects, provides input and guidance in the financial linkages initiatives focusing on the village agent model, mobile wallet technology, as well as financial product development from formal financial institutions. Sybil also pioneered and leads the organization’s Village Savings and Loans learning program which implements a dedicated learning strategy as well as collaboration practices amongst a global practitioners and external partners to analyze monitoring data, bring forth evidence of programming outcomes and apply lessons learned to programmatic approaches to reinforce program quality. Currently Sybil’s work revolves around designing key innovations for the linkages to occur between rural clients and formal financial institutions mainly with mobile technologies as a delivery channels. In line with Sybil’s technology proclivity, she has designed a ‘Mobile MIS’ based on the industry accepted and partially CARE developed Monitoring Information System for Savings Groups (group based financial performance data collection and analysis system).

Daryl Collins

Daryl Collins leads the research efforts of Bankable Frontier Associates, with a specialization in the demand-side dynamics of development finance. She was the principal investigator of the Financial Diaries, 2003-2004 field study based at the University of Cape Town, South Africa and is a co-author of "Portfolios of the Poor". Daryl began her career as an emerging market economist at a New York investment bank before moving to South Africa in the late 1990’s. She ultimately joined the finance faculty of the University of Cape Town, where she leveraged a successful career in portfolio management into research on the financial behavior of the poor. Daryl holds bachelor's and master's degrees in economics from the London School of Economics and a PhD in public policy from New York University.

Timothy Flacke

Timothy Flacke is the Executive Director of D2D Fund, serves on the organization's Board of Directors and helped launch D2D in 2001. Tim has seventeen years experience helping lower-income people focus on saving, in both the private and non-profit sectors. He has worked as an independent consultant, author and grant writer in the field of asset development. In this capacity he co-authored The Individual Development Account (IDA) Program Design Handbook, successful grant applications under the federal Assets for Independence Act (AFIA) program, and Dollar $ense, a financial education curriculum for IDA programs. Tim was a VISTA volunteer at Central Vermont Community Action Council during the start-up phase of that organization's American Dream Demonstration IDA Program, Tangible Assets. Before entering the asset development field, Tim managed employee benefits, risk management and stock option plans for Filene's Basement, Inc., a chain of off-price apparel retail stores with 5,000 employees in 13 states. He holds a Masters in Public Policy from the Kennedy School of Government at Harvard University and a B.A. in Philosophy from Boston College.

Anarge Frangos

Anarge graduated from Georgetown's School of Foreign Service in 1985 with a BSFS in International Economics and UCLA in 1991 with a MBA in Finance. In a 25 year career he has worked in Commercial Banking, Management Consulting, Corporate Strategic Planning, Corporate Management and an Internet Startup. During this period he spent five years living and working in the Asia Pacifica Region primarily in Australia, Singapore, Thailand and Indonesia. Anarge is currently working at Ekaria, LLP where he is the Founding Partner and Vice President of Strategy and Business Development. Ekaria provides software development, maintenance, support and operations for the American Express shopAmex retail rewards redemption experience. Anarge has always had a strong interest in International Development. He is presently continuing his involvement with Ekaria while pursuing his Masters of International Law and Development at the Fletcher School, Tufts University. His area of interest is Development Economics with an emphasis on the impact of credit market imperfections on development outcomes.

Walter Frick

Walter Frick is Business Editor for BostInno, an online business journal that highlights the best and brightest in Boston's innovation, startups and entrepreneurs, as well as city news, education news and technology. He covers the innovation economy - technology, startups, venture capital, social entrepreneurship - in Boston and beyond. Passionate about the power of technology to improve the world, he's always looking to learn more about the economics of innovation. He has also contributed to The Atlantic, Technology Review and other publications.

Salah Goss

Salah Goss is a financial inclusion expert specializing in mobile money, agent banking and community-managed microfinance. She is currently a Program Officer on the Financial Services for the Poor team and the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation were she focuses on designing and managing innovative business models for mobile-enabled financial product delivery. Through her work for the United States Department of Commerce and presently at the foundation, Salah has focused on public-private partnership formation using incentive-based funding mechanisms. Salah has many years of experience managing grant portfolios including her time as Grants Administrator for the West Africa Regional Office of the Soros Foundation. She is a graduate of The Paul H. Nitze School of Advanced International Studies at Johns Hopkins University and is fluent in French and speaks beginning Arabic.

John Hammock

Professor John Hammock is Research Fellow at the Frederick S. Pardee Center for the Study of the Longer-Range Future at Boston University, Associate Professor of Public Policy at Tufts University’s Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy, and the North American Director of the Oxford Poverty and Human Development Initiative. He also works with the secretariat of the Human Development Capability Association, which is housed at the Boston University Pardee Center.

He founded and was director of the Feinstein International Famine Center at Tufts University. He served as Executive Director at Oxfam America from 1984 to 1995 and as Executive Director at ACCION International from 1973 to 1980. John is a graduate of Denison University and the Fletcher School. He was the Managing Director of Global Equity Initiative at Harvard. His work centers around human development and values, with particular focus on policy issues and implementation. He co-authored Practical Idealists: Changing the World and Getting Paid (2008).

Yuwa Hedrick-Wong

Yuwa Hedrick-Wong is a business strategist and economist with 25 years of experience gained in
over thirty countries. He is a Canadian who grew up in Vancouver, British Columbia, and spent
the last 20 years working in Europe, Sub-Sahara Africa, and Asia/ Pacific. He has served as
strategy advisor to over thirty leading multinational companies in the Asia/Pacific region.

As the economic advisor to MasterCard Worldwide in Asia/Pacific since 2001, Yuwa has been responsible for monitoring and forecasting economic growth and emerging business development trends in the region. He chairs a MasterIntelligence Knowledge Panel of leading economists, policy analysts, academics and business strategists in Asia/Pacific, Middle East and Africa. In 2007 he was appointed Advisor at Southern Capital Group, a private equity fund; and in 2009 he was appointed to the Investment Council of ICICI, India’s largest private bank.

Yuwa is a frequent speaker at numerous international high-profile conferences. Recent presentations include the Morgan Stanley Investment Forum, McKinsey & Co’s Kitzbeuhel Forum, the BusinessWeek CEO Forum, Asia Business Conference at Harvard University, the Indian Economic Summit, and the Annual Asia Leadership Forum. He has also spoken at, among others, The Royal Institute of International Affairs at Chatham House, London; the World Finance Forum; the World Knowledge Forum; the Trinity Forum in London; the ASEAN Business & Investment Summit; The Economist Strategic Forecast Forums; Pacific Basin Economic Council of APEC; and the Forbes Global CEO Conference. Yuwa is a frequent commentator in the broadcast media on current economic, policy and business issues in Asia/Pacific, and is a published author in consumer market dynamics, economic development, trade, and international relations. He was voted “Communicator of the Year” in Asia in 2006 by the Asia Association of Public Relations Professionals. He wrote a regular column in Forbes Asia called “Asian Angles” in 2005 and 2006. He was adjunct professor at the School of Management, Fudan University, Shanghai, China; from 2005 to 2008; and guest lecturer at the Graduate School of Business, University of Chicago.

As a student of philosophy, political science, and economics, Yuwa studied at Trent University and pursued post-graduate training at the University of British Columbia and Simon Fraser University in Canada, where he received his Ph.D. He also received training, at the post-doctoral level, in health economics, energy and environmental economics, and scenario forecast and planning.

He is currently adjunct professor at the Sauder School of Business, University of British Columbia, Vancouver, B.C. Canada.

Janet Heisey

Janet Heisey leads Trickle Up’s efforts in providing technical assistance to ensure the inclusion of people living in ultrapoverty in government and development initiatives. She also coordinates Trickle Up’s efforts to include people with disabilities in the program and organization. Janet has served at Trickle Up since 1999, first in the development department and then as Director of the Asia program. Previously she traveled widely in Asia and Latin America, working for a consultancy group in Hong Kong and a South American resource center in Lima and Quito.

Lauren Hendricks

Ms. Lauren Hendricks serves as CARE’s Executive Director for the Access Africa initiative, which aims to provide 30 million people in sub-Saharan Africa with financial services in the next decade. Prior to leading the Access Africa initiative, Ms. Hendricks was Director of the Economic Development Unit for CARE USA and responsible for strategic direction and technical leadership for over 100 active micro finance and enterprise development programs in 54 countries. Prior to joining CARE, Ms. Hendricks was a Program Specialist at the Center for Institutional Reform and the Informal Sector (IRIS) at the University of Maryland. Her research focused on the development of low-cost tools to assess the poverty outreach of USAID funded micro enterprise development programs. Ms. Hendricks has over nine years of experience evaluating, designing, and promoting the development of micro finance programs worldwide. She spent three years in the Republic of Georgia managing a micro finance program and overseeing its transformation into a locally registered and managed institution. Before getting involved in international development, Ms. Hendricks worked for several years as a Loan Officer for Keystone Mortgage Company. She is a Director of the Board of MicroVest. She has also served as the President of the Access Africa Fund Investment Committee, and as the Chair of the Access Africa Board, since 2010. Ms. Hendricks has an M.A. from UCLA in Africa Studies and a B.A. from UCLA in Political Science.

Ron Hynes

Ron Hynes is group executive, Global Prepaid Solutions at MasterCard Worldwide. In this role, he is responsible for leading MasterCard’s prepaid business globally and delivering a product strategy to create a competitive advantage for MasterCard and its customers.

Prior to his current role, Hynes was group head, senior vice president of Expert Sales in the US market, leading sales teams focused in prepaid, commercial cards, and all government opportunities. In this role, he interacted regularly with the company’s prepaid customers helping them to build and implement their business and product strategies to capitalize on both short and long term opportunity, and to ensure customer objectives are incorporated into the planning at MasterCard. Hynes was also group head, senior vice president of Global Prepaid Solutions, where he led the development of the MasterCard global prepaid strategies, as well as overseeing the group’s product development initiatives. In addition, he served as the head of Prepaid Product Development for the Americas Region for MasterCard. In this role he worked with the US and LAC regions to develop long term strategic product plans to address the needs of the company and our customers.

Mr. Hynes received his MBA from Northeastern University in Boston, Massachusetts and a B.A. in Business Administration from the University of Southern Maine.

Ben Knelman

Ben Knelman is the CEO of Juntos Finanzas. Ben has a background in user-centric product development and economics, with experience at the Federal Reserve and World Bank. He holds a MS of Engineering from Stanford, where Juntos began as a project at the Stanford d.School. Ben was recently named one of The World Economic Forum’s “Global Shapers” under 30.

Henrietta Lake

Henrietta Lake has over 10 years experience as an ethical trade consultant, ensuring transparency and responsibility in global supply chains.

She has worked with a large number of European and North American companies to improve labour standards and minimize environment impacts within their supply base, as well as strengthen their responsible purchasing practices. Her clients range from hotels and supermarkets to clothing, footwear and confectionary retailers.

Her expertise is informed by extensive fieldwork in India, China, Bangladesh, Indonesia, Thailand and West Africa. She engages directly with brands’ local sourcing offices, agents, factory and farm management and workers, as well as with non-governmental organisations, local practitioners and government agencies. Her goal is to ensure efficiency and profitability at all levels.

Henrietta’s doctoral research examined the business benefits of improved working conditions, focussing on how alternative human resource management systems and work organisation impact production efficiency in light manufacturing.

Henrietta has a background in socially responsible investing and financial journalism.

James Lawson

Thirty-two-year-old Rev. James Lawson introduced the principles of Gandhian nonviolence to many future leaders of the 1960s Civil Rights Movement. Born in western Pennsylvania and raised in Ohio, he spent a year in prison as a conscientious objector during the Korean War, as well as three years as a Methodist missionary in India, where he was deeply influenced by the philosophy and techniques of nonviolent resistance developed by Mohandas Gandhi and his followers.

While enrolled as a divinity student at Oberlin College, Lawson met Martin Luther King, Jr., who urged Lawson to postpone his studies and take an active role in the Civil Rights Movement. "We don't have anyone like you," King told him.

Following King's advice, Lawson headed South as a field secretary for the Fellowship of Reconciliation. In Nashville, TN, he helped organize the Nashville Student Movement's successful sit-in campaign of 1960 and was expelled from Vanderbilt University School of Divinity as a result. He trained Diane Nash, Bernard Lafayette, John Lewis and many others through his famous workshops on the tactics of nonviolent direct action.

When the original CORE Freedom Ride stalled in Birmingham, AL, Lawson urged the Nashville Student Movement to continue the Freedom Rides. He conducted workshops on nonviolent resistance while the Freedom Riders spent several days holed up in the Montgomery, ALhome of Dr. Richard Harris. During an impromptu press conference on the National Guard-escorted bus that traveled from Montgomery to Jackson, MS, he told reporters that the Freedom Riders "would rather risk violence and be able to travel like ordinary passengers" than rely on armed guards who did not understand their philosophy of combating "violence and hate" by "absorbing it without returning it in kind."

In 1968, Lawson chaired the strike committee for sanitation workers in Memphis, TN. At Lawson's request, Martin Luther King, Jr. spoke to the striking workers on the day before his assassination. In 1974, Lawson moved to Los Angeles to lead Holman United Methodist Church where he served as pastor for 25 years before retiring in 1999. Throughout his career and into retirement, he has remained active in various human rights advocacy campaigns, including immigrant rights and opposition to war and militarism. In recent years he has been a distinguished visiting professor at Vanderbilt University.

Joanna Ledgerwood

Joanna Ledgerwood joined the Aga Khan Foundation in 2007 and leads their Access to Finance activities from the Head Office in Geneva. Prior to moving to Geneva, Ms. Ledgerwood was based in Uganda working with NGOs transforming to deposit-taking institutions and the Philippines working with rural banks to deepen their outreach to the poor. A former banker, she has written numerous papers and books, including Transforming MFIs with Victoria White (2006) and the Microfinance Handbook (1998), both published by the World Bank. She recently completed the New Microfinance Handbook. Ms. Ledgerwood holds an MBA in International Finance from McGill University.

Ignacio Mas

Ignacio Mas has been Senior Advisor in the Financial Services for the Poor program at the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation and at the Technology Program at CGAP. Previously, he was Director of Global Business Strategy at Vodafone Group, Executive Vice President of Marketing and Account Management at DoCoMo interTouch, and Senior Manager responsible for telecoms investments in Europe for Intel Capital.

Dr. Mas has undergraduate degrees in mathematics and economics from MIT and a PhD in economics from Harvard University. He has been Adjunct Professor at the Booth School of Business at the University of Chicago. He is currently an Associate at Bankable Frontier Associates (BFA).

Dr. Mas’ website features recent presentations and speaking engagements, and contains links to his current blog posts, publications, and other activities.

Maria May

Maria May is the Program Manager of BRAC's Social Innovation Lab She also is the focal point of the Harvard South Asia Initiative's work in Bangladesh. For the past 2 years, she has provided strategic and communications consulting to a community-based prenatal education program working with Latina immigrants in the United States.

In 2011, Sheco-authored Making Tuberculosis History: Community-based Solutions for Millions about BRAC's work in Bangladesh and beyond. Her other experience includes three years at Harvard's Global Health Delivery Project as a case writer and project manager for its research on sustaining delivery at scale, conducting social epidemiological research in New York City, and providing quality improvement support for programs serving people in the United States living with HIV. You can follow Maria on twitter @mariamayhem523.

Yasmina McCarty

Yasmina McCarty, is a Senior Manager at the GSMA Mobile Money for the Unbanked programme, leading the team’s commercial work stream. In this role, she supports mobile network operators in emerging markets as they develop their mobile money services. Prior to this, Yasmina co-founded and operated GreenMango, a technology platform in India that helped low-income entrepreneurs grow their business. Previously, Yasmina spent nearly five years in the microfinance sector, working with microfinance organizations in LAC, Asia and Africa. She holds an MBA from London Business School and Columbia Business School and a BS cum laude from Northwestern University. Yasmina is a TEDIndia Fellow (2009), Echoing Green Fellow (2008), and Cartier Women’s Initiative Laureate (2007).

Iqbal Z. Quadir

Iqbal Z. Quadir is a long-time champion of the critical role of entrepreneurship and innovations in creating prosperity in low-income countries. He is an accomplished entrepreneur who, 20 years ago, saw the potential of mobile technology to transform low-income countries.

Quadir realized in the early 1990s that the ensuing digital revolution could facilitate the introduction of telephone access throughout Bangladesh, including its rural areas. To make this vision a reality, he established a New York based company, Gonofone Development Corp (meaning “phones for the masses” in Bengali), and assembled a global consortium of Gonofone, micro-credit pioneer Grameen Bank of Bangladesh, and Norwegian telecommunications company Telenor to create Grameenphone. Grameenphone is now Bangladesh’s leading telecommunications operator providing access to over 35 million subscribers irrespective of their geographic location or economic standing.

From 2001-2004, Quadir was a Fellow and Lecturer at the Harvard Kennedy School, focusing on the democratizing effects of technologies in low-income countries. He co-founded the journal Innovations (MIT Press) and, in 2005, moved to MIT where he founded the Legatum Center in 2007. Quadir founded Emergence BioEnergy to produce decentralized energy, and in 2010 co-founded Money in Motion, a start-up company to provide mobile phone-based banking services. He sits on the Advisory Council of the World Wide Web Foundation.

Quadir’s work and thinking has been cited in nearly 30 books and profiled in publications including The Economist, The New York Times, and The Financial Times. His writing has been published in The Financial Times, Harvard Business Review, Science, Nature, and The Wall Street Journal. He received the prestigious Science, Education and Economic Development award in Bangladesh and was listed as one of 125 Influential People and Ideas for the 125-year celebration of the Wharton School in 2006. He is the recipient of the honorary Doctor of Humane Letters from Swarthmore College (2011), the honorary Doctor of Science from Case Western Reserve University (2011), and the Russell-Whitehead Business Humanitarian Award presented by the Business Humanitarian Forum Association (2012). He holds both an MBA and an MA from the Wharton School, University of Pennsylvania, and a BS with honors from Swarthmore College.

Elisabeth Rhyne

Elisabeth Rhyne works to bring together leaders in financial services to address challenges facing the microfinance industry today. She is a co-creator of the Smart Campaign for client protection in microfinance. As senior vice president of Accion from 2000-2008, Ms. Rhyne led Accion’s initial entry into Africa and India and directed the organization’s research efforts to develop new financial products and managed Accion’s publications and educational activities.

Ms. Rhyne has published numerous articles and five books on microfinance, including Mainstreaming Microfinance: How Lending to the Poor Began, Grew and Came of Age in Bolivia (Kumarian Press, 2001). She was also co-editor of The New World of Microenterprise Finance (Kumarian, 1994), which provided the introduction to microfinance for many of the field’s current professionals. Her most recent book, Microfinance for Bankers and Investors, was published by McGraw-Hill in 2009.

Ms. Rhyne was director of the Office of Microenterprise Development at the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID) from 1994 to 1998, where she developed and led USAID's Microenterprise Initiative. Ms. Rhyne’s experience includes eight years living in Kenya and Mozambique, consulting on microfinance policy and operations for governments, international organizations, and microfinance institutions.

Ms. Rhyne holds a master's degree and Ph.D. in public policy from Harvard University. She earned a bachelor’s degree in history and humanities from Stanford University.

Paul Rippey

Paul Rippey is a freelance consultant working in promoting, training and evaluating savings groups programs. He worked in microfinance in Africa for a couple of decades, where he co-founded Al Amanain Morocco and was director of the Financial Sector Deepening Project in Uganda.

He also works to help people get access to clean energy, strengthening value chains and including microfinance in the chain whenever possible, and is developing a new website, Clean Air Bright Light, to share what he has learned. He lives in Portland, Oregon, and is the author of The Cow of Gueckedou, a book of true stories about his life in Conakry available as an ebook through Amazon.

Marguerite Robinson

Marguerite S. Robinson received her B.A. and Ph.D. degrees from Harvard University and served as Professor of Anthropology and Dean of the College of Arts and Sciences at Brandeis University before becoming an Institute Fellow at the Harvard Institute for International Development (1978-2000). Now retired from Harvard, she is an independent consultant in international development, with a specialty in commercial microfinance. She has worked extensively in international development, with a specialty in large scale commercial microfinance.

Advising governments, banks, microfinance organizations becoming regulated, donors, and others, she has carried out intensive fieldwork in developing countries in Asia, Africa, and Latin America, in rural and tribal areas and among the urban poor. Her writings include books on Sri Lanka and India, and Volumes I and II of The Microfinance Revolution. She is a Member of the Board of Directors of the MasterCard Foundation, and of the Boulder Institute of Microfinance, and she is a Member if ACCION’s Advisory Council for its Center for Financial Inclusion.

Patrick Schena

Patrick Schena is Principal and leads delivery in the Investment Management Services practice of Headstrong Corp., a global provider of outsourcing services to the capital markets and securities industries. Prior to joining Headstrong, Mr. Schena was CEO and a founding partner of iX Partners, an investment technology and operations consultancy servicing global asset managers. Mr. Schena has over 25 years experience in finance and technology management focused in investment management. Prior to founding iX Partners, Mr. Schena held a number of senior positions in consulting, finance, and product develop, including serving as a Director of Product Management at ADP-Financial Information Services and CFO of Investment Software Systems, a provider of software and services to global asset managers. He holds a PhD in from the Fletcher School, Tufts University and additional graduate degrees from The Fletcher School, and Boston College.

Victoria Slingerland

Victoria Slingerland has both experience in financial services and entrepreneurship. She is the President and Co-Founder of Upward Mobility, a Boston-based software company that creates high end professional educational content and makes it available through innovative mobile platforms. Upward Mobility has more than 150 apps available globally on iPhone, Android, Palm, BlackBerry, Windows Phone, and Amazon Kindle. In addition, she is also the President and Co-Founder of PracticeQuiz.com, one of the web's most popular free educational test prep sites. Victoria worked for nine years in investment management for two leading global asset managers and has consulted on projects relating to micro-enterprise development, urban livelihoods, microfinance and financial inclusion. She is a recent alumna of The Fletcher School, where she focused on development economics and human security, and a graduate of Tufts University.

Nicholas Sullivan

Nicholas P. Sullivan is co-author of Money, Real Quick: Kenya’s Mobile-Money Innovation(Guardian Books, 2012), focusing on Safaricom’s M-PESA mobile-money service. He is also author of You Can Hear Me Now: How Microloans and Cell Phones Are Connecting the World’s Poor to the Global Economy (Jossey-Bass, 2007), which focuses on entrepreneurship and innovation in developing countries. He is co-author (with Fletcher Professor Jeswald Salacuse) of “Do BITs Really Work: Bilateral Investment Treaties and Their Grand Bargain” (Harvard International Law Journal, 2007, and Oxford University Press, 2009).

Sullivan is Publisher of Innovations: Technology/Governance/Globalization (MIT Press), a quarterly journal that promotes “entrepreneurial solutions to global challenges” with first-person case studies written by entrepreneurs. Previously, Sullivan was a founding partner of the Global Frontier Fund, a private equity fund-of-funds for frontier markets; VP/Editor-in-Chief of Inc.com, a sister company toInc. magazine; and VP/Editor-in-Chief of Home Office Computing, where he wrote the long-runningWorkstyles column.

Sullivan is co-leader (with CEME Senior Fellow Kim Wilson) of The Fletcher School Leadership Program for Financial Inclusion, an innovative residency program designed for central bankers from emerging and frontier markets funded by the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation. Sullivan has been a Bellagio Fellow (winter 2011), a Visiting Scholar at MIT’s Legatum Center for Development & Entrepreneurship (2007/8), and a Visiting Fellow at the Feinstein Center (2008), as well as a recipient of grants from the John Templeton Foundation and Rockefeller Foundation. He is a graduate of Harvard University and The Fletcher School.

Nancy Swanson

Nancy Swanson is the Executive Director of the Linked Foundation and is responsible for the strategic direction and the management of the portfolio. Linked Foundation is a private foundation that alleviates poverty by promoting and investing in market based solutions that improve the health and economic self-reliance of women in Latin America. Nancy also serves as Board Chair of the Eleos Foundation that invests and partners with social entrepreneurs in the fight to eradicate extreme poverty. She is a founding board member of "Leading from Within", a nonprofit dedicated to leadership development in Santa Barbara. Prior to joining Linked Foundation, Nancy worked in the private sector as the Vice President of Sales and Marketing for several start-up companies and as a National Account Manager for Verizon. She was a fellow of Katherine Harvey Program at the Santa Barbara Foundation and a founding member of the international nonprofit organization "9-1-1 for Kids". Nancy attended the University of Southern California, Annenberg School for Communications and Journalism, MA in Communications Management and the University of California, San Diego, BA in Communications.

Peter Uvin

Peter Uvin is Academic Dean and Henry J. Leir Professor of International Humanitarian Studies at The Fletcher School. He has written extensively on the intersection between human rights, development, and conflict resolution. He has been a frequent consultant to agencies working in Africa on these same issues. His 1998 book "Aiding Violence: The Development Enterprise in Rwanda” won the Herskovits Award for the most outstanding book on Africa. In 2006/7, he received a Guggenheim Fellowship, which led to his latest book "Life after Violence. A People’s History of Burundi” (2008). He also wrote a book on "Development and Human Rights" (2004). Dr. Uvin obtained his Licences in Diplomatic Science and in Political Science from the University of Ghent and his Ph.D in Political Science from Institut Universitaire de Hautes Etudes Internationales, University of Geneva.

Peter Walker

Peter Walker has been Director of the Feinstein International Center at Tufts University since September 2002 and active in development and disaster response since 1979. He has worked for a number of British-based NGOs and environmental organizations in several African countries, and has been a university lecturer and director of a food wholesaling company. He joined the International Federation of Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies in Geneva in 1990 where he was Director of Disaster Policy for 10 years before moving to Bangkok as Head of the Federation's regional programs for Southeast Asia. He has traveled extensively in the Middle East, Africa, Eastern Europe and the Former Soviet Union, and has published widely on subjects as diverse as the development of indigenous knowledge and famine early warning systems, to the role of military forces in disaster relief. Dr. Walker was the founder and manager of the World Disasters Report and played a key role in initiating and developing both the Code of Conduct for disaster workers and the Sphere humanitarian standards. He holds a BSc from Sheffield University and a Ph.D in soil science, also from Sheffield University.

Kim Wilson

Kim Wilson is a lecturer at The Fletcher School and a Fellow with the Center for Emerging Market Enterprises and the Feinstein International Center at Tufts University. Spending time in India beginning in 2001 through 2005, Professor Wilson worked closely with savings groups, connecting them to banks with a particular focus on tribal areas. She has worked for Catholic Relief Services heading their Microfinance Unit, and in that tenure, spearheaded CRS' shift from focusing on credit to the poor to savings of the poor. Professor Wilson has consulted for many international agencies in savings and credit. Previously, she was in the private sector, occupying senior management positions in finance and franchising.